> "We hired a consultant for something we later learned was already inside the building — three engineers had shipped versions of it before."
^pain
A collective retrieval pain where the missing artefact is a *person*, not a document. Directories list titles; nobody knows who has actually shipped a specific problem before. Teams reinvent or hire consultants for knowledge that already exists internally. The knowledge is alive, just not findable through the people-graph.
## Discovery questions
- "If I asked you 'who in your company has shipped a real production version of X', could you give me a name in under a minute?"
- "How does a new hire find the right person to ask, when they don't yet know who knows what?"
- "What's been the cost of hiring outside help for something you later learned was already inside the building?"
^discovery-questions
## Examples
- IBM Connections deployment at Royal Bank of Canada is documented as an expert-finding case; employees previously struggled to identify colleagues with specific skills.[^1]
[^1]: https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/rbc-collaboration